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Large numbers of living specimens of native wild flowers, col- 
lected on field trips, have been sent in to the Garden during the 
past season by members of the staff. The Garden hopes soon to 
have under cultivation large groups of each species that grows 
wild within 100 miles of Brooklyn. Persons interested in the 
Garden will confer a great favor by sending in living specimens 
of almost any perennial wild flower. 
During August the buckwheat, grown for green manure on 
the museum esplanade and adjacent areas, was plowed under, 
the entire region graded, and sown with grass and clover. It was 
mowed for the first time on October 6 
Visitors to the Garden during July-September included Prof. 
Gentaro Yamada and Mr. Katudzi Uyemura, of the Higher 
School of Agriculture and Forestry, Morioka, Japan (July 3), 
Mr. O. T. Burger, Gainesville, Fla. (July 24), Prof. F. Kglpin 
Ravn, and Mrs. Ravn, of Copenhagen, Denmark (Aug. 12), Mr. 
Julius Matz, Experiment Station, Gainesville, Fla. (Aug. 20), 
Prof. Donald Reddick, Cornell University (Aug.), Prof. W. H. 
Rankin, also of Cornell (Sept. 2), and Dr. W. T. Bovie, of Har- 
vard Medical School (Sept. 3). 
Miss Shaw, assistant curator of public instruction, gave four 
addresses on September 6, 7, 8, and 10, before about 400 teachers 
of the Monroe County Teachers’ Institute, at Anderson, Ind. 
The general subject of her talks were nature study and children’s 
gardens. On her return journey she stopped at Cleveland, Ohio, 
and inspected the children’s gardens and community gardens, so 
successfully carried on there under the supervision of Miss Louise 
Klein Miller. 
On August 6, Prof. Harshberger, with a class in plant geog- 
raphy from the Brooklyn Institute Biological Laboratory, Cold 
Spring Harbor, L. I., inspected the Garden plantations. 
Among interesting plants now in fruit in the economic house 
are the Chinese guava, cattleya guava, pawpaw, fig, lemon, kum- 
quat, lime, and banana. The development of the banana plant 
and its bunch of fruit has been a subject of considerable popular 
interest. The plant was only about one foot high when planted 
